Four Nights of a Dreamer

Robert Bresson

Perhaps Bresson’s most underrated film, Four Nights of a Dreamer captures a series of meetings across consecutive nights between two young strangers, surrounded by the still-smoldering remains of May ’68, conjuring the majesty and mystery of human connection.

DIRECTOR
Robert Bresson
YEAR
1971
COUNTRY
France
RUNTIME
82 minutes
LANGUAGE
French with English subtitles

Perhaps Robert Bresson’s most underrated film, Four Nights of a Dreamer finds the ascetic master again adapting Fyodor Dostoevsky, here transposing the short story “White Nights” to contemporary Paris. Four Nights of a Dreamer captures a series of meetings across consecutive nights between Jacques (Guillaume de Forêts) and Marthe (The Mother and the Whore’s Isabelle Weingarten). Surrounded by the still-smoldering remains of May ’68, the two open their hearts to each other, conjuring the majesty and mystery of human connection, at once obscure and clarifying, direct and ambiguous. A characteristically sophisticated system of sounds, images, and sounds-replacing-images, Four Nights of a Dreamer was only the second Bresson film in color, and it stands as one of his most vivid and romantic works. A Janus Films release.

The restoration was made by mk2 Films under the supervision of Mylène Bresson, at Éclair Classics (Paris) and L.E. Diapason, with the support of the Centre national du cinéma et de l’image animée (CNC).

Special thanks to Villa Albertine for their generous support of French cinema.

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Four Nights of a Dreamer
Four Nights of a Dreamer
Four Nights of a Dreamer
Four Nights of a Dreamer
Four Nights of a Dreamer

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